Cirilo "Chilo" Madrid bribed an elected official and helped steal $550,000 from a program for children with severe emotional disturbances, a federal court jury found in convicting him Friday.

Madrid, who had deep connections to some of El Paso's most powerful politicians, was immediately ordered into custody until he is sentenced March 22 along with his co-conspirators, Ruben "Sonny" Garcia and former County Judge Dolores Briones. Garcia and Briones have already pleaded guilty.

Madrid was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the federal government, conspiracy to commit theft or embezzlement of federal program money; theft or embezzlement of federal program money; and conspiracy to commit mail fraud and deprivation of honest services. Madrid and Garcia were indicted Dec. 14, 2011.

REPORTER

Marty Schladen

Madrid's lawyer, Leon Schydlower, asked that Madrid, 67, be allowed to remain free until he is sentenced and added there is little risk that his client would flee.

U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo refused.

"He has several years -- quite a few years -- of reasons to abscond," Montalvo replied, referring to Madrid's potential prison sentence.

Madrid faces up to five years in prison on the first count he was convicted of, 10 on the second and 20 on the third. Montalvo will use federal sentencing guidelines and consider other factors to determine Madrid's sentence.

Madrid also faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution and fines. Montalvo warned him sternly Friday not to make any big purchases or gifts between now and his sentencing date.

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After Friday's hearing, Schydlower said that he was disappointed with the verdict, but that he respected the jury's decision. He said Madrid plans to appeal.

Prosecutors in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Juanita Fielden and William Lewis Jr., said they were not authorized to comment and referred questions to Daryl Fields, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas. Fields issued a statement summing up Madrid's conviction, but he declined to comment further.

It took the 12-member jury less than four hours to reach its verdict in the case that took prosecutors seven days to present. Through documents and testimony, they portrayed Madrid as the driving force behind an effort in 2005 to steer a $600,000-a-year contract with the Border Children's Mental Health Collaborative to Garcia's company, LKG Enterprises Inc. LKG was paid for 11 months of work.

LKG was paid to evaluate the collaborative -- a critical function because federal rules required the evaluator to form a review board to ensure children were protected and that the evaluator gather information for a national database.

The county-run collaborative was funded in part by a 2002 federal grant. It was intended to bring emotionally disturbed children home from far-away residential facilities, place them with their families and shape services to help them.

As CEO of Aliviane Inc., a behavioral-health nonprofit, Madrid was on the collaborative's governing board from its inception.

Witnesses testified that it was that board's job to come up with a plan to make the program financially sustainable.

Yet when LKG got the evaluation contract, it awarded a subcontract for a sustainability plan to Introspectives Inc., a company owned by Jose Soria, who worked for Madrid at Aliviane.

Soria has not been charged, even though Garcia testified that he, Madrid, Soria and Lorenzo Aguilar paid cash bribes to Anthony Cobos to support the collaborative as Cobos succeeded Briones as county judge in January 2007. Cobos and Aguilar face federal charges in a separate indictment.

Soria awarded a sub-subcontract to Madrid, who was paid almost $100,000 to develop a sustainability plan.

The arrangement was a ruse to hide Madrid's conflict of interest and to funnel money to him for supposedly doing work that already was his job as a volunteer member of the collaborative's governing board, Fielden said.

Madrid produced a 20-page report that was plagiarized from the Internet, and Garcia turned it in to county officials in late 2006 along with hundreds of pages of documents that had little to do with the functioning of the collaborative, Assistant County Attorney Michael Wyatt testified. Peter Selby, a partner in the consulting firm that evaluated the collaborative before and after LKG, testified that Garcia's company provided no information to a national database.

Federal officials overseeing the grant that funded the collaborative said the LKG debacle led them to consider ending their funding, which probably would have killed the collaborative.

When Madrid resigned his post at Aliviane this year in the wake of his indictment, it ended a career in which he used political connections to get himself and Aliviane government contracts.

Fielden said Madrid and Garcia worked on Briones' political campaigns, and Garcia estimated that he worked on 15 campaigns of various officials in the past 20 years.

Madrid contributed heavily to U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, and Aliviane was the beneficiary of a $250,000 congressional earmark in 2010. Also in 2010, Aliviane received a $170,000 contract from the Ysleta school board, whose president was Reyes' sister-in-law, Marty Reyes.

In both cases, Aliviane was unable to show that its programs produced positive results. The agency itself is under federal investigation.

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